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Where it all began

I decided if I was going to shoot anything, I wanted to try my hand at shooting some of the sport I loved, BMX. I picked a national event in Memphis, about an 8-hour drive away. I contacted the magazines I had read for years to tell them I’d be there and would love to meet any of the editors there. John Ker, editor of BMX Plus! Magazine called me at home. He explained that he wouldn’t be there, that they wanted to see if I could cover it for them. When I picked up my jaw from the floor I said “Yes!”.

I shot it, they loved what I shot and asked me to come out to Los Angeles to hang out for a week and shoot some more. I came out at the finish of the semester. What a week. I got to meet a lot of my heroes, both on the publishing side and riders, and ride at famous places. It was crazy and exciting!

I returned home and freelanced for them for a couple of months, covering mostly freestyle team tours, even meeting Mat Hoffman when he was only 16 and blasting bigger air than anyone I’d ever seen.

Nine months after I first picked up a camera, I got a call from John asking if I could move out to L.A. to take a staff position at their sister magazine, American Freestyler. On 3 days notice, I moved out and took the job. John became my second mentor, a really great one, and I worked for that publishing company for a year-and-a-half.

What a time, traveling all over the country and a few places outside every weekend, becoming friends with my heroes, even working with a quirky kid from a rival magazine by the name of Spike Jonze. I was immortalized by him once on the pages of his magazine partly because the publishing company I worked for wanted it’s editors to remain pretty anonymous.

It was a great time, and I used to help kids with any photography question I could answer back then. One of the most respected names in BMX photography told me last summer that I had let him look through my camera at a race once, and that inspired him to get into photography. I was honored, and blown away. A lot of people have helped me in my career, and I am always happy to give back in whatever way I can. I try never to be too busy to answer questions from others, I’ve been known to coach people via mail or email, and more recently I’ve been giving seminars like the ones I’ve done at the DV Expo.

I love shooting BMX, skateboarding, all kinds of alternative sports. I think participating in those sports myself, even on an amateur level, helps me understand them better and portray them properly in images. I like my images to help the viewer feel what it’s like to actually be doing the sport. I’m lucky enough to work on projects with the best riders in the world, and I take advantage of their expertise to learn to be better at those sports. I was working on a wakeboarding book for a kids’ book publisher and the pro I was working with taught me how to wakeboard. Who gets chances like that?

On an ad shoot I was shooting one rider at a skatepark. After a while, he was tired and needed a break. I borrowed his bike and helmet (it was sweaty, but I wanted to ride!) and found myself sharing the halfpipe with legendary Eddie Fiola. Does it get any better? This is the kind of stuff that we all got into this for, not because of the vast amount of financial resources the industry has to offer. We’re all lucky these sports excite the outside world enough to bring in new people and opportunities. I’ve often found myself as a liason between an outside entity and the industry.

Since I left my first magazine, I’ve worked staff for other magazines and been lucky enough to now work for myself for quite a few years. Freelance photography is tough, even tougher nowadays with all the people who want to do it and all the lowballing companies trying to make life harder for us. I help educate younger photographers and companies as much as I can.

But I wouldn’t trade my job for anyone else’s on the planet. I get to make a living being around the sports and people I love.

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